Why is SEO beneficial for fitness businesses ?
We have all heard hundreds of times that Search Engine
Optimization (SEO) is a crucial digital marketing tool, but how important is it
for developing your fitness business?
In short it is very important and here is why –
Builds Trust
Let’s think for a second, if someone moves to your town and
wants to join a gym what would they do first? I bet they will search “gyms near
me” or “Gyms in …….” Google will then list the gyms in your town. If your
website ranks higher on search engine pages, it is more likely perceived as superior
or more trustworthy. SEO helps you get that spot on the first page of Google
searches.
Expands your audience
SEO enables you to target your website & Ads towards an
audience that is more likely to join your gym and purchase a membership. Compared
to traditional marketing strategies, SEO can offer a competitive advantage by
getting your website higher rankings and more visibility.
You ultimately want a strong SEO Strategy so that you can
attract organic traffic and potential customers to your website.
Conversions
By combining SEO with conversion rate optimization (CRO)
enables your fitness/gym website to have more conversions. How?
SEO attracts potential clients to your website from search
queries. SEO also highlights the services your gym/fitness centre may provide
such as CrossFit classes, HIIT, Boxercise or yoga.
CRO offers an enhanced user experience, where you can
highlight to your visitors on your webpage that you have what they are looking
for.
Together CRO & SEO improve conversions by improved
ranking and better user experiences.
Insights
By using SEO your business can collect data, which is quantifiable,
this data can be the base of your decision making for your Market Strategy. A
real life example may be checking the analytics for SEO keywords in January to
target new gym sign ups when people are most likely to commit to healthy habits
at the start of the New Year.
The bottom line is by successfully implementing SEO for your
fitness website, you can ultimately lead to more online traffic which can
covert to more clients and more memberships for your business!
By Kelsey S
Have you read SEO: The race to No #1, in it Oxana describes SEO as the ‘Protein to a Gym Bro’. It is such a good description of how important it is in the fitness industry to be putting in the work to optimise your website and the long term benefits that it offers. Considering people have so much choice now and with the rise of online fitness personalities it has created for gyms customers outside a traditional gym, and a whole other revenue stream. This can only be done if search engines can find you, I can see why you say analysing keywords is so essential and to do this on a continual basis as they will change throughout the year. – Helen Mc
ReplyDeleteVery good point about SEO enabling a business to target their website and ads towards an audience that is more likely to need their product or service, which in turn leads to more conversions. Gone are the days of mass marketing hoping that will convert to sales. What is the point in casting the net wide when you can pinpoint the consumer that is most likely to purchase the goods or service, and SEO allows that.
ReplyDeleteGreat blog, Kelsey - very much agree with everything you have said, got the nail on the head, the four main points of why SEO is important . Even thought I agree with the trust building point - I do wonder - does it actually build trust or is the person doing SEO for a company just so good at what they do? I know that's not all that is involved of course, but makes me wonder. I also agree with Ciara's point above, mass marketing is gone - I would also argue traditional media is gone for the purpose of marketing - at least it's dying out. It's all about the digital now.
ReplyDeleteGreat blog post, Kelsey! I agree with all your points on why small businesses should invest in their SEO and love your connection to the fitness industry. Trust is definitely an important point - I know I myself always choose relevant results that rank high in organic searches - but Oxana mentioned a great point in her comment. Is it really building trust or are SEO managers just experts at knowing what we want? Some food for thought. Anyway, the fact of the matter is, SEO leads to more views and more potential members so you hit the nail on the head!
ReplyDeleteKelsey, I agree, by successfully implementing SEO on your webpage it will increase your webpage views, which will hopefully convert these views into clients, it’s a win-win really!! Also, I mentioned in Helen’s blog, if your webpage isn’t fully implemented using SEO, this could be the reason someone visits your gym or not. If your webpage doesn’t show up on the results page when someone in your locality googles ‘’gym near me’’ they will end up visiting your competitor’s gym instead, resulting in you losing out on sales! Ultimately, it is crucial you rank above your competitors as someone moving to your area may convert into a loyal 12-month membership if your page was visible.
ReplyDeletegreat post
ReplyDeletegreat tips and some excellent takeaways and food for thought.
Caitriona